The long-range goal of the SCORE Program at Meharry Medical College is to assist in improving the competitive status of the school's research enterprise relative to other health science centers in the United States. The program seeks to create a research environment wherein faculty may improve their research skills and capabilities to efficiently conduct high quality research to disseminate their research through peer-reviewed publications and presentations at national meetings, and to compete for independent extramural research funds. Additionally, the SCORE faculty are dedicated to increasing the number of scientists who are members of minority groups who are currently under-represented in biomedical research by their support of the RISE program. Finally, research projects proposed in the SCORE application will assist the institution in its mission to conduct basic, clinical and applied research with special emphasis on diseases and conditions that disproportionately affect the ethnic minority populations. The specific aims (measurable objectives) of the current application are to; 1) to increase the number of peer reviewed publication by MBRS investigators from 1.3 to 2.0 papers per year by the end of year-0.3; 2) to maintain the level of faculty presentations at national meetings to above 1 per year; 3) to increase the acquisition of R01 type grants from 10% to 20% of the SCORE investigators by year-04. The current application requests support for 20 regular research projects and 8 pilot projects. Projects are submitted from the School of Medicine departments of Anatomy and Physiology, Biochemistry, Microbiology, Pathology and Pharmacology as well as from the School of Dentistry. Thus the projects focus on a broad spectrum of health related issues including cancer, cardiovascular and pulmonary diseases, signaling and transduction mechanisms, oral health, infectious diseases and neuroscience. Utilizing the increased flexibility and additional resources afforded by the SCORE Program initiative, the program at Meharry Medical College seeks to achieve a more intense research environment, with varied collaborations, to insure that research specific aims are completed, that data are faithfully published and that the pursuit of additional extramural funding is accelerated.